I’m a fixer.
I love problem solving.
I love making things better. And finding what’s wrong and making it right.
Often I fail to appreciate things for what they are, in pursuit of what they could be.
In a recent sermon I was listening to, the pastor commented on what Pastor Rick Warren (author of Pilgrim’s Progress, and Purpose Driven Life) said about moving on after his son committed suicide, it came down to:
Moving on doesn’t mean that what happened is ok, it means that we’ve accepted we can’t change it.
As I consider my life, and even certain things on the Race, I see the things I’ve held on to, and I realize that I’ve held on to them in hopes of making them better. I hold onto them, playing them over and over in my mind in hopes of finding the way to fix them.
But holding on doesn’t let me move on. I carry the weight of those troubles, and add more.
Talk about “dead weight”…these things are causing death to the life I should be living.
Eventually a new problem will consume my mind and allow for the past to be tucked away. And it’s not until there’s another related event that I am reminded of a past one and try to reason through and fix that problem sometimes seeing one trouble through the lens of another. Weight upon weight upon weight, it makes it harder and harder to move on.
What I am learning, and trying so desperately to do (it’s not easy!), is to accept things more for what they are. I can’t change the past. But I can determine where I store those troubles, and how easily I allow myself to access them in my thoughts. So for now I’m working on placing the past on shelves. I put them there broken, because I’ve accepted that there are some things I can’t fix. And I can’t forgive or move on until I stopped trying so hard to make it better.
So for now, I put it on the shelf. I stop carrying it around. And I pray that God continues to work in my heart, so that one day, I can look at the shelf of brokenness and see how each of those things have made me a stronger woman…not because I carried around the weight, but because I can pick up today, much more easily.
